


Notify me of your death (my sorrow)

by Analinea



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Cora is OOC, Hurt, I'd say this is a happy ending but I guess it's very slightly bittersweet, Immortal Derek Hale, M/M, Reaper Stiles Stilinski, buckle up guys, cause this is an AU, cause this is angsty af, following Gobling canon until I decided to be a dick about it, read the notes for a trigger warning/Goblin spoiler, 쓸쓸하고 찬란하神 - 도깨비 | Goblin (TV) fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-04 21:14:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16354427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: Stiles knew it would end up like this eventually. Doesn't make it any easier.





	1. i will see you in parts of me

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not coming out of retirement (if there's still anyone around from my Teen Wolf days), I found this in the WIP folder I was cleaning up and was rudely attacked cause I thought it was a dump of ideas but it was 1k of pain. So I fixed up some mistakes, made my friend beta the first chapter (thank her for enabling me, but the remaining mistakes and general suckiness of this are mine), and got rid of it by posting it.  
> Title is...title is taken from youtube eng subtitles on a fanvid for Goblin, so technically it's in the show but the trad is not mine ([watch it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjtVZrOkP9A))  
> Chapter titles from CYN - I'll still have me ([cry about it like me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MZgtCp8mtc))
> 
>  
> 
> **TW and spoiler for Goblin: mentionned suicide**

Stiles knew it would end up like this eventually. Doesn't make it any easier.

He slides down the wall, his trembling legs unable to support his weight anymore, lets out a trembling breath. He can't bring himself to wipe the tears that wet his cheeks and blur his vision. He doesn't want to see anything anyway.

This room, this bed, and the picture with the familiar figure on it. With his past on it.

He doesn't want to remember the anger on Derek's face. Even if he deserves it.

He doesn't want to remember the way Derek pushed him against the wall, the way it knocked the breath out of his lungs, the way he couldn't help the flinch when Derek raised his fist. He's so pathetic. He should've stayed still, so Derek wouldn't have realized how pitiful he really is, so Derek would have let his fist connect with Stiles head.

He deserved it.

But Derek froze and looked deep into Stiles eyes and what he saw there disgusted him so much that he'd dropped him.

“Please,” Stiles had begged, though he still doesn't know for what even now. Derek had left.

 

It feels like hours before Stiles can get up, before he can look around at this space they both shared for so long. Two men out of time in all the senses of the words, reluctant flatmates, on their ways to reluctant friends.

Stiles could've dealt with that, with only being friends and never acting on the feelings that had grown and grown so much he thought he'd never breathe again. He doesn't need to anyway, he's already dead. Has been for centuries, since he killed himself from the guilt of it all.

A couple of days ago it came back to him, when he touched that girl's wrist and saw her previous life. She'd been Derek's sister -the one in the picture- and Stiles had killed her. He had killed Derek's family. And he had killed Derek.

He can't justify it. There's no way around how wrong it all were, no matter that he'd been raised by a hateful man spilling poisoned words in his ears since he was born. Stiles may have been Argent's weapon, but it was still his hand with blood on it.

Nogitsune, they'd called him after. The Mad King.

And now Derek knows. Derek hates him.

Stiles doesn't believe this can be fixed. So he leaves.

 

 

 

Fate is a strange thing, Derek thinks, when he goes back home. He doesn't expect Stiles to be here and doesn't want him to be. His absence still pierces his heart like a knife.

He stares at the paper in his hand, right next to the old picture of Cora. She's so pretty in this, and Derek doesn't think he'll ever get used to her new face, more mature but still mischievous. She's not a child anymore.

He remembers her laughs, and the thud of the arrow that killed her and Stiles’ voice when he gave the order; he remembers it like it was yesterday.

Yesterday, that he was in love with his king and trying to protect him from Argent. There was so much light in Stiles then, that surfaced desperately like trying to breathe around a fist squeezing his throat.

 _Don't let yourself be alone now. Don't let my mistakes keep you from trusting again._ That's what Stiles wrote. No word on the note spells sorry, and Derek is grateful for that. Forgiveness is a complex machinery that is all scrambled up inside of him, and he's not sure what he feels about all of this. He was almost letting go of his past and now...

The pain in his chest doesn't allow him to forget about the curse (the fire, the arrows, the guns). He's not sure he can forgive Stiles for putting it there in the first place, making him into the Wolf. Derek has an invisible sword cutting his heart each instant of his non-life, was supposed to find the one that could take it out and end it all. He yearned for that peace.

But Stiles shattered it all. Made him want all the extra years he could get. He thought centuries of this was enough and yet. He longed for more.

Maybe that's the purpose of putting them in each other's paths. Maybe fate intended for Derek to only ever love one man despite the betrayal.

Maybe, maybe. Maybe that's both their punishment.

 

 

 

It was Stiles. It _is_ Stiles.

That's all Derek can think about when it's clear that it's Stiles' wish that makes him teleport and transform. He had spent months wondering how that happened and why, now he understands that from the very beginning the only person that could free the sword was going to be the one that wielded it.

But Derek doesn't– he doesn't _comprehend_.

Because Stiles wished him here and he's here; and Stiles is the one that's supposed to make Derek's punishment -his life- end, and–

And Stiles is a ghost. He's a _reaper_. So how can it be, that he's shaking in Derek's arms now. _Dying_.

“I'm sorry, I'm so...I love you,” Stiles cries when his unfocused eyes anchor him to Derek's. Tears run down over his temples, get lost in his hair; Derek is suddenly thrown back to this day weeks ago when he learned of the truth, when he almost hit Stiles.

He had feared that violence inside of him, hated himself for the thoughts in his head and the look on Stiles' face.

Derek knows now that even then -unable to process his feelings and his rage- he had already forgiven Stiles. That, perhaps, the most unforgivable thing would always have been Stiles killing himself but Derek can't help being grateful that it gave them time.

He hates himself for that, too.

He wipes the blood rolling from Stiles lips with his thumb, squashes he despair inside of him. The Wolf is powerless. He doesn't know what to do. He thought they'd have more time, so he wasted it for weeks staying away from Stiles.

“I forgive you. I–” He can't bring himself to say the rest of it. Stiles jerks with the breaths he's trying to take and he _smiles_.

“You're only– only saying that be– because I'm dying,” he stutters out, finishes on a broken whisper.

“You're not,” Derek says with as much confidence as he can. Stiles is not dying. He's not. He's just not. He _can't_. He has to...to save Derek first. He has to...Derek was supposed to be the first one to go. That's the curse, right?

Right?

Derek swallows the lump in his throat. This is too much. Too fucking much after everything. It took him hundred years of pain to atone for failing his family, even though he never really understood why. He had to suffer for all the lives his mad rage had taken but how many killers had fallen under the same curse as he? He never ran into even one.

Even Argent hadn't been punished like Derek, surviving on chaos long enough to get to Stiles _again_ , so why? This is just unfair.

Because now Stiles is dying. He shouldn't be able to.

“You can't die,” Derek says out loud in a voice that he refuses to be broken, “so I'm saying the truth. Because you can't die.”

Stiles' sad chuckle turns into bloody coughs and a whimper of pain.

“You, uh, made me alive ag– again. I'm– I'm– I'm sorry I remembered. We were happy, right?”

Derek smiles. It's the hardest thing he ever had to do. “Yeah. We were.” He doesn't say that they could have been again. That's a story no picture will ever get to capture.

He finally understands that the curse was his and his only, in that he's the one that made it happen. He believed he should suffer for what he did. So he did.

He's not sure what happened to Stiles, then.

He still remembers the sword, the blood on Stiles hand. Derek died before he could see his king's face. He died looking down at the hilt of the weapon, and he can still see it. It's glowing a faint blue, wisps of smoke around it.

“I love you,” Derek whispers, looking up from his past to see that Stiles' eyes are closed. No. He was supposed to hear the words. He wasn't supposed to die, Derek was, and Derek wanted him to know.

He swallows the sobs that want to tear out of him.

He takes Stiles' limp hand in his. Brings it to the ghost of the sword in his chest. Wraps the bloody fingers around it. And pulls.

Everything is darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's one line I _know_ I took from somewhere, but I can't fucking remember where, points if you can tell me where you've heard the "don't let me keep you from trusting again"; also forgive the Nogitsune mention in a k-drama fusion I can't let go of season 3b.  
>  **Please COMMENT, kudos aren't enough by a long shot...**


	2. in who i was back then

Derek wanders. He doesn't know how long it's been, or if it can be measured. Time, you learn as an immortal, is a construct. Years go by in the blink of an eye and when he blinks nothing has changed: it's still the same white landscape all around him.

It might be snow. It might be ash he's treading through. He doesn't feel it.

Derek wonders. He's been punished and now he's dead but it doesn't feel like the freedom he's been promised. Where is the absolution? He thinks maybe he lost it with the last of Stiles' breaths.

He blinks.

A ghost told him, once, “You look like a very lonely god.”

He wanted to tell her that he wasn't lonely, he was losing everyone to the years. That he's never been a god. Seeing himself reflected in her eyes was unbearable, so he snapped at her, “Don't you know who I am? I'm the Wolf, and I eat nosy people for breakfast.” It could've been funny, the way she poofed away. It kind of was.

But now the emptiness surrounding him is gnawing at him moment after painful moment. He tried, in the beginning, to ask God, or god, or fate, or the pantheon of divinities he never believed in -the irony- what he's doing here. There was no answer. No sound.

Derek remembers the realization that his sentence was of his own making. Maybe, just maybe, it didn't feel like peace to disappear like he did. Without the reaper.

He blinks.

In his hand is a thin piece of paper with careless cursive on it -he remembers this. It's from before the fateful night ( _I remembered: I am Stiles. I am the king_ ).

Things were a mess in the aftermath of– of Stiles getting his memories back ( _we were happy, right?_ ). Tears were shed, accusations were made, old enemies came back. Dead people were killed.

It all started like this:

 

A reaper and the Wolf lived together. One remembered nothing, the other had seen too much.

 

The reaper found himself drawn and drawn again to a girl. Derek thought, catching them from afar, that this was a love affair. He didn't go back home that night.

He saw that girl again, through his company owning the building _-_ a _coincidence_. “Hey, bro,” she called out, “were you looking at me?”

Derek turned back to her. He didn't know what it was, exactly, about her. Her nonchalance. Her disregard for social hierarchy -you don't go around calling people in suits _bro_. Right? (Sometimes, Derek woke up and a generation had died and he didn't understand a word the new one said)

“What's your name?” he asked.

She considered him for a minute, chewing gum and tilting her head. “Coraline,” she answered, “with an _e_.”

 

It'd been a bright summer day.

“Do you think the king will like me?” Coralyn had said, head sticking out of the carriage to look at her brother riding next to it.

“He will take one look at you and find you so ugly he'll run away,” Derek had laughed, but in his heart he'd been worried. Cora would know, soon. Because the king had still refused to marry but the way he'd looked at Derek mirrored the way Derek had looked at him; but over the king's shoulder was Argent.

Anxiety, always, in Derek's bones. King Stiles had grown up under the influence of an evil man and his fight against it was faltering. There'd been nothing Derek could do but fight for his country and gain a place close to the man he loved, protect him to the best of his abilities whenever he'd came back from the wars.

How could he have known, really, that it would kill them both.

 

Derek looked at the reaper. After months of bickering, they both settled in an old couple routine. Derek would've found that funny and irritating in equal measure, if he didn't wish so deeply for it to be real.

He couldn't say how or when it happened, falling in love. Time was flimsy like that.

The reaper said, “I met a girl, I don't know why but I keep running into her. We're going for coffee.”

They should have known better, the two of them. Nothing _just_ happened, in their lives.

Derek watched the reaper (in this light he looked like like a painting), swallowed his envy and said, “Do you even have a name?”

It was easier, the hurt on the man's face.

 

It'd been a bright summer day.

“If you take one more step, they all die,” Argent had declared. The king had stood there, silent, unforgiving. Derek hadn't recognized the coldness behind these eyes. He'd known the warmth and the kindness and the will to be good. Not this.

He'd known, he'd known. The love they'd shared for a short, blissful moment. Lost to history.

“Derek,” Cora had whispered. No longer a child but standing here like a queen. She'd loved Stiles too, in her own way. She'd seen the beauty of him, before it'd been twisted by Argent.

“Derek,” she'd repeated, “save him. Don't worry about us.”

So Derek had taken a step. The thud of the arrow is a sound that still haunts him. The sound of his sister's body hitting the ground. She'd only been the first to die that day.

“Stop,” the king had snarled. “No matter your schemes, this throne will never be yours. Turn away now, or die!”

 _I thought you loved me too_ , Derek had thought. Had known.

He still knew it, when the sword pierced his heart.

 

 _I love you_ , Derek thought, watching the reaper.

 _I love you_ , Derek thought, writing down the name of his king on a piece of paper he burned to honor the dead.

 _I love you_ , Derek thought, dying.

 

He blinks.

The paper in his hand is signed 'reaper' and has Derek's name too under a list.

There was a quiet time in between tolerating each other and accepting they were friends, and at the very edge of it there was this contract.

The reaper, all snark and nervous energy, sat down Derek to lay down ground rules about taking turn for the trash and the cleaning. Derek, all deadpan sarcasm, said it was a good thing to do four months in their living together.

Each bullet point is full of corrections and additions made in Derek's own handwriting -so old fashioned, the reaper said.

And the last one, it's all the reaper.

_I can still keep the house when you go away to keep your cover; I hereby swear to take care of our house if you swear to always come back._

Derek laughed. “My house,” he said, then “are you so lonely?” he joked, then to soothe the sting of those words Derek added, “it's not exactly correct wording for a contract, but I'll sign it”.

“I signed it,” he yells at the sky -is it the sky he can't tell everything looks the same. “I signed it,” he repeats, holding the paper up. “So I have to go back! Send me back home!”

 _But Stiles is dead_ , a voice whispers in the back of his mind, and he squashes it. He lived hundreds of years on flimsy hope. He can do it a little longer.

He blinks.

 

Stiles _is_ dead. But he has been for a long time, so it's not exactly a surprise to see him behind the windows of his workplace, waiting for the next souls.

He looks up, spots Derek. He tilts his head while biting his lip in thought. “What miracle are you up to, Wolf?” It's the same words as the first time they met.

Derek opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He turns away.

Stiles is not Stiles anymore -again. He's just the reaper.

He doesn't remember.

 

Cora– Coraline with an _e_ , is still in the same spot he last saw her in. She has something wistful in her eyes. He recognizes her now that he knows; she doesn't have the same face in this life, but there's still something of hers in it.

She looks at him through the window of her shop and the rain. Beckons him inside.

“Something on your mind, big brother?”

' _Are you here to visit me, big brother?'_ s _he'd smile with a twinkle in her eyes but there was worry behind it. The king was slipping away._

“So you remember.”

“Remember?” she asks sitting up to lean on her elbows, playing dumb. “I remember you from coming to eat here with that man.”

Derek scoffs. “ _That man_ doesn't remember. So it seems there's a lot of that going around lately.”

Cora tilts her head. “Seems to me you're the kind of man who doesn't care about the way things are going.”

_Save him. Don't worry about us._

“Maybe I'm the one who forgot, then.”

 

Derek paces. He's back home. He held his end of the bargain.

There was this couple, months ago, that the reaper told him about. This man who had waited for his wife for fifty years, so they could go through the Door together.

Derek has waited centuries. He keeps waiting for Stiles to come into the house and throw his shoes around in that way that drives him mad.

He's curious. Did the waiting man suffer, too? Did she, taking the long way 'round?

Is the reaper hurting, phantom pains of memories ripped away?

Derek stops pacing. He doesn't want to think about the night Stiles died again, but–

He can't help but wonder, suddenly, would it hurt the reaper to remember again?

 

Derek stops in front of the big windows of the reaper's place, it's a routine now. They look at each other.

“Do you have a name?” he asks, but unlike the first time he asked there's just confusion on the man's face.

“I'm a reaper,” the reaper answers. Simple as that, easy as dying.

Fast as the blade had been, in his hand; swift as the poison he drank to make the guilt go away; as painful as seeing the ghost of Argent kill him.

In Derek's opinion, it's always been living that's been a tenuous affair. He used to think it unfair, now he hopes he can make it worth it. He's been given a second chance.

“Do you have a home?”

“Are you offering?”

 _I have a house that you're supposed to take care of, yes_.

“I've always been curious about you lot,” Derek smiles, a frightening thing. He's so afraid to mess things up, it makes the Wolf come out.

But Stiles, with his memories or as the reaper, stays the same at his core. He heard the stories about the immortal Wolf. He grins, sharp. Loving the danger. “And I heard you have fire at your fingertips. Can't wait to draw it out.”

 


	3. maybe in another life everything worked out alright

The leaves are falling in bright oranges and yellows and rare patches of green. Their steps crunch on the soft ground, and it's the only sound. You can't even hear their breaths, and maybe they don't even breathe at all.

There's a clearing, but the trees here are young enough -in immortal years- that the reaper can imagine how vast it used to be. The ruins are less landmark and more part of the land now. You have to really look for them; steps, doors, paths, all buried with the people that lived here, and this lonely archway that survived the centuries thanks to one keystone–

The reaper finds nostalgia in his heart, but the kind of longing you get in unknown countries. He doesn't know what they're doing here.

“This is home,” the Wolf murmurs to himself but loud enough for the reaper to hear it. They both came through a door, because their lives are made of them.

The Door the reaper keeps, for ghosts to go through while he has to stay behind. The door in his mind that locks his identity away. The doors the Wolf teleports through -what a fun way to go places. The reaper only appears. The Wolf can do that too, though, but it seems he only travels by showing up out of thin air when the reaper thinks really loud about him.

“Home from when you were alive? What's your story, Wolf?”

“Stop calling me that,” the Wolf answers, not looking at the reaper. His words want to bite, but don't have the energy to. “I was Derek Hale. And here lived the king.” He does turn to the reaper then, looking like he expects something.

The reaper gazes into the Wolf's eyes wondering what this is. It's raw and it looks like the kind of hope you already know if false.

The reaper is a lot of things, but he's not an idiot. He also knows he can't take much more of this before he bursts with this love growing in his heart. He's a dead thing, he shouldn't be able to feel this way. He doesn't even have a name. He heard of Derek's though. Everyone did, even if the reaper pretended not to know so he could hear it pronounced by the deep voice of its owner.

“You were killed by your king.”

“I loved the king.”

There's a short silence. A leaf falls to the ground. Dead thing covering dead things. Fall is the reaper's favorite season, it makes him feel less alone.

“Do you hate him now?”

“It was always more complicated than that.”

“What happened to him, then?”

The Wolf hesitates, a flash of apprehension in his eyes. He looks on the edge of praying, but the reaper knows exactly what kind of faith the Wolf lacks.

“He killed himself.”

The reaper looks away at that. There's something in his heart, recognition. But no memories. No past. He figured it out, a while after he started living with the Wolf; reapers can only be the kind of ghosts they don't take through the Door.

The realization didn't really hurt: it meant nothing. This, on the other hand, is a fist around his heart.

He turns back to the Wolf. “Derek,” he tries out the name. It falls easy out of his mouth, at home around his tongue and his teeth. “Am I the king then?”

Derek huffs out a tired breath. “Would it hurt if you are?”

“Did it, the last time I remembered?”

There's surprise now on Derek's sharp features. But really, the reaper isn't a fool. He remembers all the ghosts he helped, except in the last year. There's a gap that shouldn't be obvious since his days are so alike that they could've seamed together neatly with him none the wiser. If it hadn't been for all the hints.

And for this girl, at the restaurant. And that red haired woman on the bridge. The things they said...

“I don't know, I didn't have time to ask.” Derek's voice is pained, and the reaper wonders what the story is. He hesitates visibly, so the reaper waits. “I didn't have to ask. It hurt, I know that.”

“So, do you hate me?”

Derek turns away and walk a few feet. Another leaf falls. The reaper is falling, too. This is world changing. Derek kneels and uncovers a tiny hole in what's left of a wall buried under the leaves. Inside, there's two candles and two names, too far away to be discernible.

He says, “I did, maybe. When I came back and you were dead and I couldn't have my revenge or– or whatever I wanted to get from you. You killed everyone I loved.”

The reaper doesn't really know what words could make this less painful, so he stays quiet, but he doesn't miss the fact that he's included in the long list of his own victims.

“But I never really stopped loving you either. You were misled and manipulated, and in the end you were the hand but you never really were the killer.”

This doesn't really make sense, without knowing the full story. He waits again.

“We've been punished enough, I think. And I don't think you'll ever remember again, that's the way it has to be.”

“Why?”

Derek slowly gets back up and glances at the reaper. “I don't know, Fate I guess. But you touched her hand didn't you? Cora's hand?”

Fate, yes, the reaper met Fate once. Same bridge. Lover of scarfs. Disappeared in a cloud of butterflies, which should have been poetic but only managed to be aggravating.

“Coraline, with an _e_? I did. I didn't see anything.” Weird, but not unheard of. First life means a reaper can't see the past ones, obviously; or it happens when people are more than simple humans.

“She's– she was my sister.” _And you killed her too_ , stays unsaid. “She lived here with you, for a time.”

“Were we married?”

For some reason, that makes Derek laughs. And really laugh, too, no bitterness or mockery. The reaper guesses they were not married, then. It kind of makes sense, because Derek loved his king and the reaper used to be this king and the love he feels in every atom of his being, it seems older than him.

“We loved each other, didn't we?” The king loved Derek back.

Derek hums, still looking at the hidden altar.

“We weren't happy, right?”

Derek stiffens, but it doesn't seem to be at the reaper's declaration. More at his choice of words, though the reaper can't say how he knows that. Derek looks back at him, finally, unreadable. He reaches for something in his inside pocket; a journal. He offers it to the reaper, who hesitates before taking his hands out of his lazy-days-sweater. The air is chilly on his warmed up skin, and it never ceases to amaze him, that his blood still flows through his veins. A blessing and a curse.

Derek says, “This is my last journal. I wrote it after you moved in, the second time.”

The reaper looks up at that, but Derek continues, “Even without your memories, you deserve to know. Everything important is in there. This is...this is the one of my happiness.”

The reaper remembers, walking in the Wolf's bedroom and seeing a shelf full of journals. _The pages of my desperation_ the Wolf had said. The oldest one smelled like centuries had passed since ink touched its pages.

“It's yours,” Derek adds, when the reaper's finger brush against the soft cover. “It's how we found each other again. Even when it's sad, it's worth it.”

A leaf fall to the ground when the reaper clutches the journal to his chest. He looks at the dead thing that somehow looks vibrant and beautiful and so alive. “You know...,” he starts, hesitates with a lick on his lower lip. “They say that if you catch a maple leaf before it touches the ground, you'll fall in love with the person next to you.”

The ground crunches under Derek's feet as he approaches. “Do you want to know your name?” They're almost chest to chest now.

The reaper chuckles, “What kind of question is that, you didn't even answer me first.”

“Oh, did you ask a question?”

There he is, the reaper thinks, the smartass Wolf. “Do you want to say my name?” he asks instead. He hopes and hopes and hopes. Deep down he _knows_ , but with their kind of history, with their kind of non-lives, nothing is ever simple.

Suddenly, Derek jerks forward without breaking eye contact. Under this light, his irises look almost turquoise. The reaper gasps quietly, doesn't step back. He can feel Derek's warmth through their clothes. The Wolf can make fire. The reaper can use the coldness of death. What is it, again, about opposites?

“I believe this is yours.” Derek lowers an arm that the reaper hadn't noticed was up in the first place. In his hand, there's a leaf. “Forever.”

The reaper opens his mouth to point out how cheesy that sounds, but instead his voice cracks on, “Forever is a long time for people like us.”

Derek smiles. “Yes. Yes, I want it to be. Stiles.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **please please please leave a COMMENT**


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